Acústico MTV is ústicoMTVTitãthe second live album released by Brazilian rock band Titãs. It's part of the MTV Unplugged series and resulted in a tour, a CD, a DVD and a TV special broadcast by MTV on 22 May from that year.
The show featured various guest performances, including Argentinian singer Fito Páez on "Go Back", Marisa Monte on "Flores", Jamaican Jimmy Cliff on "Querem Meu Sangue", and ex-Titãs singer Arnaldo Antunes on "O Pulso". Páez also sings and plays the piano on the DVD version of "Televisão", while the CD version (recorded in studio) is sung by guest Rita Lee and played by also guest Roberto de Carvalho. The CD also features a short version of "Cabeça Dinossauro" sung by Marina Lima. Maria Bethânia was also expected to perform a version of "Miséria".
Conception and promotion
Despite it having been a radio and commercial success, the band rejected the idea of it being an album conceived with commercial interests. They said creating these versions for their own songs was a challenge. As vocalist and bassist Nando Reis said, "we had to prove that Titãs could be different from Titãs and still be as good as them". They were afraid of sounding "pathetic", but were happy with growing their audience and to be back on the radio. Reis said the work was "a relief. It is very important for a band of this size to be popular. We have no underground vocation. I have no vocation to perform for half a dozen people. This does not mean to make the work mediocre". The album was also thought of as a celebration of the band's 15th anniversary.
In order to carry all musicians involved with the project from one performance to another, the band would travel on two buses. The last performances of the tour took place in 4 and 5 April 1998, at Olympia in São Paulo. These only happened after much requests from the fans, since the tour was supposed to end on 14 March at Ibirapuera Gymnasium, after 140 shows. In these last performances, the band already presented to the public their version of "É Preciso Saber Viver", a hit from their then future album Volume Dois, which they were conceiving at the time.
In 2019, amidst the band's "Trio Acústico" tour, which celebrated 20 years of Acústico MTV, Britto said the band was surprised by that time with the success of the album: "Many people bet on this idea that our songs would succeed, while others thought they wouldn't match. We ourselves had some doubts. [...] Yet, I feel that when the album came out we were surprised with the speed and the reach it had in terms of popularity. Our audience went through a radical renewal. We started playing to very young audiences and to an increasing number of women. Maybe we were the most popular group of that year, taking all genres into account."
Song information
Apart from tracks taken from every album by the band until then (except for Tudo Ao Mesmo Tempo Agora (1991) and Domingo (1995)), the album and DVD featured four new songs: "Os Cegos do Castelo", "Nem 5 Minutos Guardados", "A Melhor Forma" and "Não Vou Lutar"; each is sung by each of the vocalists of the band's line-up at the time (respectively, Nando Reis, Sérgio Britto, Branco Mello e Paulo Miklos). "A Melhor Forma", "Nem 5 Minutos Guardados" and "Não Vou Lutar" were composed long before the album (the two former were originally planned for Õ Blésq Blom) and were resurrected for this release. Originally, only one new track would appear and the band chose "Os Cegos do Castelo"; later, however, Reis said this generated some discomfort so they decided to have one new track for each vocalist.
"Go Back" is featured in the album as a Spanish language version created by Martin Cardoso for Os Paralamas do Sucesso and to which Britto added some verses by Pablo Neruda in a spoken part. He did something similar on "Homem Primata", this time with some verses by Bob Marley. The version of "Prá Dizer Adeus" was chosen for radio airplay. In the first shows (including the ones recorded for the releases), "Bichos Escrotos" and "Polícia" consisted of short, virtually a cappella jingles by the band singing with the audience, but they eventually earned their own, full versions.